Faculty
A diverse group of people make up the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES) and the program in Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures and Media (AMCM). A wide geographical range (from Japan to Central Asia) and research fields (from the classics to contemporary media) are covered by award-winning and highly accomplished professors. Affiliated members ensure rigorous engagement with different humanistic disciplines for graduate students. Teachers of Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Urdu, Hmong, Japanese, and Korean—all recognized for their high pedagogical skills—produce language savvy students year after year.
Regular Faculty
Fall 2024 and Spring 2025
Name | Contact | Specialties |
---|---|---|
Shir Alon
Assistant Professor |
230C Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Literary temporalities; theories of world literature; gender theory; postcolonial theory and decolonization; historiography of the modern Middle East |
Palita Chunsaengchan Assistant Professor |
327E Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Comparative Media Aesthetics; Film theory / historiography; Early Thai Cinema; "Media Modernity"; Cinema and Politics of Class, Production and Circulation; Contemporary Southeast Asian Cinema |
Joseph Farag
Associate Professor |
220M Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Palestinian literature and film; modern Arabic literature; Arab cultural studies; modern Arab history, politics, and society; Arab-American studies |
Alia Goehr Assistant Professor |
228C Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Ming- and Qing-dynasty Chinese literature; Chinese Religions; The Novel & World Literature; Theories of Mind and Corporeality; Commentary Traditions |
Maki Isaka
Professor |
223 Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Japanese theater and literature; gender studies |
Alexander Jabbari Assistant Professor |
220N Folwell Hall [email protected] |
19th- and 20th-century Middle East and South Asia; Persian literature; literary and intellectual history; philology; Persianate world |
Reginald Jackson Visiting Professor |
327F Folwell Hall [email protected] |
|
Christine Marran
Professor |
327C Folwell Hall On leave IAS Fellowship Fall 2024 |
Japanese popular culture from the 1870s to the present; Japanese literature; Early Meiji writing, especially newspapers and gesaku literature; Gender, sexuality, and identity in print and film culture; Ethics and the animal; Japanese and Asian film |
Jason McGrath
Professor Director of Undergraduate Studies
|
225 Folwell Hall [email protected] (for DUS matters) |
Chinese and international cinemas; modern and contemporary Chinese literature and culture; realism in fiction, film, and theory; issues of convention and intertextuality in film theory; art and the nation; Chinese and Western Marxism |
Morgan Rouzer
Professor |
230D Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Traditional East Asian poetry and poetics; Buddhism and its relation to pre-modern and modern literature; classical Chinese literary traditions in Japan |
Nida Sajid
Assistant Professor |
231D Folwell Hall [email protected] |
South Asian Literature (Hindi-Urdu); Muslim Cultures of South Asia; Intellectual History and Paracolonial Networks; Global Eighteenth Century; Human Rights and Transnationalism; Gender, Caste and Religion in South Asia; Material Culture and Dress Studies |
Suvadip Sinha
Associate Professor Director of Graduate Studies
|
228D Folwell Hall
|
South Asian cinema and literature; global modernities; nationalism; post-colonial theory and literature; philosophy of non-human; animality |
Professor
Chair
|
220H Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Korean literature, film, and intellectual history; state violence and historical memory; melodrama; nationalism; humanism and its critiques |
Teaching Faculty
Arabic
Name | Contact | Specialities |
---|---|---|
Katrien Vanpee Senior Lecturer Director of Arabic Language Instruction |
231E Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Arabic linguistics, teaching Arabic as a foreign language, pre-Islamic, classical and modern Arabic poetry, Nabati poetry, cultural heritage of the Arabian Peninsula, Gulf studies |
Mohammed Hussein Teaching Specialist |
228A Folwell Hall [email protected] |
|
Ali Mohamed Teaching Specialist |
228A Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Chinese
Name | Contact | Specialties | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Yufen Chang Senior Lecturer Director of the Chinese Flagship Program and Chinese Language Instruction |
220K Folwell Hall [email protected] |
|||
Hai Liu Senior Lecturer |
227 Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Linguistics, teaching Chinese as a second language, classical Chinese and literature | ||
Pei-Chun Shih Teaching Specialist |
227 Folwell Hall [email protected] |
|||
Jin Yaliang Stone Senior Lecturer |
227 Folwell Hall [email protected] |
American literature, teaching Chinese as a second language | ||
Yao Tu Lecturer Associate Director, Chinese Flagship Program |
220D Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Curriculum and teaching, instructional design and technology, OPI testing | ||
Hong Zhang Teaching Specialist |
[email protected] | Chinese language, Chinese calligraphy |
Hindi and Urdu
Name | Contact | Specialties |
---|---|---|
Meraj Ahmed Senior Lecturer Director of Hindi and Urdu Language Instruction |
220C Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Hindi and Urdu languages |
Hmong
Name | Contact | Specialties | |
---|---|---|---|
Bee Vang-Moua Senior Teaching Specialist Director of Hmong Language Instruction |
230A Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Hmong language | |
Kia Yang Teaching Specialist |
230A Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Hmong Language |
Japanese
Name | Contact | Specialties | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Fumiko Matsumoto Senior Teaching Specialist Director of Japanese Language Instruction |
220A Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Japanese language | ||
Marnie Jorenby Senior Lecturer |
231A Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Japanese language | ||
Keiko Kawakami Senior Teaching Specialist |
231A Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Japanese language | ||
Ayumi Mita Senior Lecturer |
231A Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Japanese language | ||
Masanori Shiomi Teaching Specialist |
231A Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Japanese language | ||
Kenichi Tazawa Teaching Specialist |
231A Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Japanese language |
Korean
Name | Contact | Specialties |
---|---|---|
Hangtae Cho Associate Professor Director of Korean Language Instruction |
220J Folwell Hall [email protected] |
North Korea; dialectology and language policy; the growing divides of the past 70 years between North and South Korea in the areas of language, society, and culture; language pedagogy; proficiency assessment; phonology in general; Morse-Alumni Distinguished Teacher |
Bryce Johnson Senior Teaching Specialist |
421 Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Korean language |
Sugyung Kim Senior Teaching Specialist |
229B Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Proficiency-oriented language instruction and second language assessment, Korean as a foreign language, project-based Korean language learning, curriculum development |
Suyon Kim Teaching Specialist |
229B Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Korean language |
Fatima Zahra Han Senior Teaching Specialist |
421 Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Korean language |
Faculty Emeriti
Name | Contact | Specialties |
---|---|---|
Joseph Allen Professor Emeritus |
[email protected] | China; Taiwan; Taipei City; Chinese poetry and poetics; colonialist photography; Chinese textbooks and the modern nation |
Affiliate Faculty
The following faculty members can serve as dissertation co-advisors and as a member or reader on graduate committees.
Name | Contact | Specialties |
---|---|---|
Hakim Abderrezak Associate Professor Department of French & Italian |
303C Folwell Hall [email protected] |
Representations of clandestine migrations in Arabic, French and Spanish, Maghrebi and Beur literature, cinema and music, the contemporary western Mediterranean, Francophone studies |
Jeffrey Broadbent Professor Department of Sociology |
1026 Social Sciences Building [email protected] |
Political sociology, environmental sociology, climate change, social movements, institutions and culture, Japan, East Asia, cross-national comparative methods, network analysis, qualitative methods |
Teri Caraway Professor Department of Political Science |
1311 Social Sciences Building [email protected] |
Southeast Asian politics, transnational labor issues, comparative political economy of labor, gender and comparative politics |
Arash Davari Assistant Professor Department of Political Science |
1231 Social Sciences Building [email protected] |
Middle East politics, politics and culture of modern Iran, revolution, Modern and Contemporary Political Theory, Anti-Colonial, Anti-Imperial, and Postcolonial Political Theory, Islamic Political Thought, History and Theory; Race, Ethnicity, and Politics |
Kale Fajardo Associate Professor Department of American Studies |
104 Scott Hall [email protected] |
Gender and sexuality studies, queer theory, queer of color critique, masculinity studies, transgender studies, Philippine Studies, Filipinix Studies, Asian American Studies, American Studies, Global Studies, globalization studies, migration studies, conceptual ethnographic practice, (UC) Santa Cruz School of Ethnography, visual cultures, photography, environmental humanities, human-fish relations |
Keya Ganguly Professor Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature |
222 Nicholson Hall [email protected] |
The Frankfurt School, Intellectual History of Vision, Sociology of Culture, Postcolonial criticism, Global cinema, Marxism, Peripheral Literature |
Vinay Gidwani Professor Department of Geography, Environment & Society Institute for Global Studies |
333 Social Sciences Building [email protected] |
Labor geographies, theories of agrarian and ecological change, spatiality of class and identity politics, Marxism and post-Marxism, India |
Daniel Greenberg Assistant Professor Department of Art History |
421 Heller Hall [email protected] |
East Asian art |
Rachmi Diyah Larasati Associate Professor Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies |
425 Ford Hall [email protected] |
Performing arts in global politics and culture, the dancing body, political economy of aesthetics, tourism and female citizenship, Indonesia |
Mai Na Lee Associate Professor Department of History |
937 Heller Hall [email protected] |
Southeast Asia, Southeast Asian American/Hmong communities, Highland Southeast Asian Studies |
Kevin Luo Assistant Professor Department of Political Science |
1209 Social Sciences Building [email protected] |
Chinese Politics, East Asian Politics, State Building, Authoritarian Politics and Democratization, Politics of Development, Comparative Historical Analysis |
Nabil Matar Professor Department of English |
330C Lind Hall [email protected] |
Arabic and European travel literature, early modern Euro-Islamic contacts, Arab-Islamic civilization, 17th-century British religious literature |
Hiromi Mizuno Associate Professor Department of History |
941 Heller Hall [email protected] |
Modern Japan, gender and sexuality, intellectual and cultural history, cultural studies of science and technology, nationalism and colonialism, human rights and international laws |
Richa Nagar Professor Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies |
425 Ford Hall [email protected] |
Politics of development; feminisms, praxis, and people's movements; intersectionality, translations, and people's theater, South Asia |
Yuichiro Onishi Associate Professor Department of African American & African Studies |
808 Social Sciences Building [email protected] |
African and Asian diasporic studies, black radicalism and internationalism, African American history, critical race studies, Asian American studies |
Sonali Pahwa Assistant Professor Department of Theatre Arts & Dance |
580 Rarig Center [email protected] |
Middle East studies, performance studies, digital media, gender studies, youth culture, Egypt |
Zozan Pehlivan Assistant Professor Department of History |
918 Heller Hall [email protected] |
Environmental History, Climate Change, Violence, Pastoralism, Middle East, Ottoman Empire, Kurdistan |
Matthew Rahaim Associate Professor School of Music |
170 Ferguson Hall [email protected] |
Ethnomusicology, Indian music, ethnography and performance, Hindustani vocality |
Anna Lise Seastrand Associate Professor Department of Art History |
417 Heller Hall [email protected] |
South Asian art, Tamil Cultural Studies, Hinduism |
Sima Shakhsari Associate Professor Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies |
Transnational Feminist Theory and Practice, Transnational Queer Theory and Sexuality Studies, Diasporas, Necropolitics, Neoliberalism, Governmentality, Social Media, Refugee Studies, Middle East Studies, Political Anthropology, Cultural and Social Anthropology | |
Ajay Skaria Professor Department of History |
924 Heller Hall [email protected] |
19th- and 20th-century South Asia, environmental history, postcolonial studies/theory, intellectual history, adivasi religious movements, democracies and minorities |
Hoon Song Associate Professor Department of Anthropology |
395 Hubert H. Humphrey Center [email protected] |
Ontology of power, materiality of sovereignty, psychoanalysis, biopolitics, philosophical anthropology, animality, US and North Korea |
Wayne Soon Associate Professor Program in the History of Medicine |
Shepherd Labs [email protected] |
History of medicine, history of modern China, Taiwan, and diaspora, history of health insurance and medicine, history of pandemics |
Shaden M. Tageldin Associate Professor Department of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature |
218 Nicholson Hall [email protected] |
Empire and postcolonial studies, 19th- and 20th-century literatures in English, Arabic, and French, trans-African and trans-Asian studies, literatures of migration and diaspora |
Ann Waltner Professor Department of History |
912 Heller Hall [email protected] |
Ritual, law, religion, traditional Chinese social history, gender, analysis of historical documentation, rumor, gossip, Chinese history, world history, feminism |
Margaret Werry Associate Professor Department of Theatre Arts & Dance |
550D Rarig Center [email protected] |
Cultural politics and performance of ethnicity, nationalism, and trans-nationalism in the Asia-Pacific region, performance theory and historiographic method, anthropological approaches to performance as social dramaturgy, critical race theory |